Baccoo (also Bacoo, Buck; bakru, bakulu, bakuu)

Region/Culture: South America (Guyana and Suriname)
Mythos: Guyanese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: A small, partly human spirit kept in a bottle and commanded to bring wealth or do harm.
Mythical Attributes: Grants riches, wishes, and unseen service to its keeper, but punishes neglect with poltergeist violence.
Role in Mythos: A bottled familiar of personal fortune whose favour is bought with constant feeding and, in the darker tellings, with a life.
Relation to Humans: It serves a single keeper, enriching the household that feeds it milk and bananas and obeys its needs. Starved or crossed, it turns on that same household with stones, fire, illness, and ruin.

On a shelf at the back of a Guyanese house, behind the rum and the kerosene lamp, sits a corked bottle that no one is allowed to touch. Inside it, by certain accounts, waits a small man no taller than a forearm, with eyes too large for his face and arms that hang past where his knees should be. He has no kneecaps. At night he wants milk, and he wants bananas, and if he gets them he will make his keeper rich.

This is the baccoo, also written bacoo and known in Guyana simply as a Buck. Across the border in Suriname the same being is the bakru, and deeper in the rainforest, among the Saramaka and Ndyuka Maroons, the bakulu or bakuu. The name travels with the people who carry it, and so does the bargain at its centre: wealth and favours from a creature small enough to keep in glassware, fed on a diet a child could supply.

The arrangement is domestic and strange. A baccoo lives in its bottle, stoppered tight, and is let out to work. Catching one is a matter of patience. Something is placed in an empty bottle to lure the baccoo inside, and once it has entered, a cork is driven home; after that it cannot leave on its own. Its keeper sets down milk and ripe bananas the way another household might leave food out for a dog, and in return the baccoo brings money, runs errands no human could, and carries messages from one place to another without being seen.

Forget to feed it and the mood changes fast. A hungry baccoo throws stones against the walls and the zinc roof, flings crockery across the room, starts small fires, and rattles the house through the dark hours like a poltergeist with a grievance. Starve it long enough and it turns on the family it once served. The stories that end this way end with sickness, ruined fortunes, and sometimes a death. The price is never as small as the creature.

Folklore draws a line between two kinds. There are baccoos kept under contract by prosperous merchants, working mercenaries that guard a fortune and grow it, and there are loose ones that simply infest a place and torment whoever lives near. In Suriname the darker reading dominates. There the bakru is a money-making demon, and the wealth it hands over is bought with a life. The riches are borrowed against a person, and the debt comes due. During the Lawa gold rush at the end of the nineteenth century, when West Indian labourers pushed into the Maroon-held forests in search of fortunes, older ideas of a bush spirit and newer ideas of a made-to-order money demon ran together into the figure that survives today.

Its roots reach back across the Atlantic. Folklorists who recorded these beliefs in the early twentieth century, the Penard brothers among them, traced the baccoo to West African traditions of small, powerful spirits, the Akan mmoatia chief among them, the little people of the forest. Others connect it to the Yoruba abiku, the spirit of a baby that dies before it can be named, for whom small wooden figures were carved and kept in the home. The link is suggestive rather than settled. What is clear is that the being changed once it crossed the ocean, absorbing details from the many peoples who told its story, until it belonged to no single tradition and to all of them at once.

Descriptions do not agree, which suits a creature kept hidden in glass. The Guyanese baccoo is usually a short man with a large head, oversized eyes, and long thin arms and legs, missing his kneecaps and moving only after dark. Older Surinamese accounts describe something stranger: a figure with an outsized head whose body is half flesh and half wood, as though it were assembled rather than born. That wooden half echoes the carved figures of its likely origin, the object and the spirit folded into one body.

Its powers are practical rather than grand. A baccoo can lift a poor household into wealth, grant the wishes its keeper murmurs to it, move unseen through a town, and strike at an enemy from a distance with thrown stones and sudden flame. For all that, it is a creature of dependence. It must be fed, constantly and correctly, on milk and bananas, and it can be shut away in a bottle by nothing more elaborate than a cork. Its strength is leashed to an appetite, and the same hunger that drives it will, once neglected, turn it against the hand that kept it. To own a baccoo is to take on a servant that never stops needing and never forgets a slight.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a baccoo?

A baccoo is a small, partly human spirit from Guyanese and Surinamese folklore that is kept inside a corked bottle and commanded by its owner. It can bring its keeper great wealth and grant wishes, but it can also be sent to harm other people. It is known as a Buck in Guyana and as a bakru in Suriname.

What do you feed a baccoo?

A baccoo must be fed a constant supply of milk and ripe bananas by the person who keeps it. As long as it is fed and satisfied, it works for its owner and answers wishes. If it is starved, it stops serving and begins to cause trouble.

How do you catch and keep a baccoo?

A baccoo is caught by placing something to attract it inside an empty bottle, then jamming in a cork once the creature has gone in, which prevents it from escaping. The owner then keeps the bottle hidden and feeds the baccoo milk and bananas. Releasing or neglecting it carries serious risk.

What happens if you neglect or anger a baccoo?

A neglected baccoo behaves like a poltergeist, throwing stones at houses, flinging objects, setting small fires, and causing general mayhem until it is fed or freed. If it is starved for too long it can turn on its own keeper, bringing illness, financial ruin, or even death. In Suriname the wealth a bakru provides is said to be paid for with a human life.

Where does the baccoo come from?

The baccoo descends from West African beliefs about small, powerful forest spirits, especially the Akan mmoatia, and has also been linked to the Yoruba abiku. Carried to Guyana and Suriname through the Atlantic slave trade, the figure absorbed influences from many cultures and is now shared across the region. Early folklorists such as the Penard brothers documented it in the early twentieth century.